Poetica Astronomica: Hyginu’s Star Atlas Offers The First Depictions Of Constellations

MessageToEagle.com – Filled with colorful aillustrations, the Poetica Astronomica, usually called the Hyginu’s Star Atlas is one of the first books to feature constellations and mythology behind them.

It is not entirely clear who created the Poetica Astronomica, but the work has been attributed to the Roman historian Gaius Julius Hyginus who lived during the 1st century BC and book of stories.  However, not everyone is convinced the atlas was really written by Hyginus.

The fact that the book lists most of the constellations north of the ecliptic in the same order as Ptolemy’s Almagest (written in the 2nd century AD) has led many to believe that the text was created by a more recent Hyginus.

Although the the Poeticon astronomicon is not particularly useful as a guide to the night sky, it is still a wonderful and valuable piece of work to anyone interested in ancient astronomy.

The text describes 47 of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, centering primarily on the Greek and Roman mythology surrounding the constellations.

Published by published by the German printer Erhard Ratdolt in Venice, the Poetica Astronomica was reprinted in 1482.

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Ratdolt commissioned an unknown artist to produce a series of woodcuts to accompany Hyginus’s text. As with the earlier illuminated manuscripts, these artist’s impressions are quite fanciful. Some resemble the existing depictions from manuscripts, whereas others are quite different in character. Orion, for example, is shown as a knight in medieval armor.

As with many other star atlases that would follow it, the positions of various stars are indicated overlaid on the image of each constellation. Nevertheless, the illustrations commissioned by Ratdolt served as a template for future sky atlas renderings of the constellation figures. The text, by contrast, is an important source, and occasionally the only source, for some of the Greek myths.

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